CIVIC TRUST AWARDS IN WOLVERHAMPTON

The Mander Centre

The Mander Centre, Victoria Street frontage.

The Civic Trust gave this shopping centre and office block
an award in 1969, when it had just been completed. The citation
reads: "Although similar to many new shopping developments in
back-land and behind existing street frontages, this one has real magic
and real urban quality and is made of real materials. Success
would seem to be due first to the client, prepared and perhaps asking
for a scheme with quality above the normal; then to the architect
for seizing his opportunity and producing a simple, almost classical,
answer in spite of the strange site and considerable change in level;
and finally to the contractor for making a good job of it. The
result is a great asset and credit to Wolverhampton. The tall
square tower is handsome and stands well in the town. Detailing
and finishes of the shopping area are excellent. Architecturally
it shows well controlled imagination throughout. It is also full
of people shopping and enjoying themselves". (The architect was
James Roberts, the contractor was C. Bryant and Son Ltd.; and the client
was Mander Property (Wolverhampton) Ltd., the property holding arm of
the Mander family enterprises).

The Mander family had settled here ages ago and
established a japanning works, which gradually turned into a varnish
factory, which spread from the original house to cover a large site on
both sides of St. John's Street. By the 1950s a town centre
varnish factory was no longer acceptable and quite uneconomic; the
company moved everything out to their works at Heath Town. They
also did as much site acquisition as they could to provide a suitable
area for redevelopment. What they ended up with was a site which
was mostly surrounded by existing shopping streets and which sloped
diagonally. The Civic Trust assessor may well have been right in
guessing that the client wanted a high quality scheme - Manders was
still a family owned company and had a commitment to the town. The
result was that the town lost most of St. John's Street, a foul factory
and one of its better (if then more than little dog-eared) buildings,
the old Grammar School. What it gained was a large new shopping
centre with an office tower block. It was largely of exposed
concrete ("real materials") but did not present a brutal face to many
existing streets. Indeed it was largely hidden behind existing
street frontages (a feature not as common as the assessor seems to
think) and its "magic quality" probably rested on its being a bright,
bustling and enclosed area which you got into through passages from the
ordinary streets. The most intrusive aspect of the centre was, and
is, the office tower block, which rather offensively competes with the
tower of St. Peter's on top of the hill. The centre having been
built across the slope of the land, shops in Victoria Street could also
have access to the Mander Centre. The whole effect could be
puzzling, but endearing. Many people will remember that the top
floor of Yarnolds was on the bottom floor of the Mander Centre.
All in all, despite the concrete, it was, architecturally, one of the
more successful town centre redevelopment schemes of the time.

Commercially the centre was an immediate success.
Together with the lower quality, local authority promoted Wulfrun Centre
(to which the Mander centre linked), it changed the centre of gravity of
shopping in Wolverhampton, pulling it away from Lichfield Street and
Chapel Ash. The centre underwent a revamp (was it in the early
1990s?), which was another high quality piece of work and might have got
another award had it been entered. The most spoken about feature
of this revamp was the covering of the central court with a roof which
could be moved aside in fine weather. Nobody can be found who has
ever seen this happen.

The centre is no longer part of Manders and is now owned
by some property company or other, who have drawn up plans for yet
another revamp, perhaps because the refurb of the Wulfrun Centre, by yet
another property company, has, surprisingly, made the Mander Centre look
rather dowdy. The new plans will modify the main frontage onto
Victoria Street and may soften its impact. The movable roof will
become a fixed roof and the centre become fully enclosed and climate
controlled. Doubtless that will see the end of the recorded public
address announcement that let shoppers know that it was raining outside:
"Because of the inclement weather, moisture is being brought onto the
marble floors of the centre. Please take extra care". The
plummy voice in which this is read slightly emphasis the word "marble",
thereby drawing attention to the luxurious surroundings whilst glossing
over the fact that installing a floor that is slippery when wet is not a
good idea.